reviews

Offbeat Writing with a Sexy Twist

A relative newcomer to the literary journal community, FLAPPERHOUSE has been in publication since 2014. The editorial staff says that the focus of FLAPPERHOUSE is the “surreal, shadowy, sensual,” which is accurate given the issue that I reviewed. This is a quirky journal with a sense of humor, even if that humor is often dark.

An “interview with ourselves” provides a sense of the magazine’s aesthetic: https://flapperhouse.com/2013/11/21/interview-with-the-flapperhouse/ The journal is available in multiple formats: in traditional print, digitally as a PDF, and selected pieces are offered online at their website for free.

Issue 17 (Spring 2018) contains nineteen poems and eight pieces of fiction of varying lengths, from a one-paragraph flash piece to thirteen pages. The biographies of each contributing author suggest that most of the pieces are by up-and-coming authors who have other work in prestigious journals and who have published books. However, it appears that FLAPPERHOUSE would accept work that fits their aesthetic, regardless of an author's previous publication history.

Issue 17 is well-edited, with a coherent theme. Most pieces in this issue address the surreality of coming of age, of burgeoning sexuality, of gendered interactions, of the way former lovers can haunt, and other life transitions. Of note are Katie Longoforo’s “Virus” poems (“The Virus Shaves Her Legs,” The Virus Asks for Couples Therapy,” “The Virus Draws a Self-Portrait,” “The Virus Cries During Sex”). The first of these serves as a representative example of FLAPPERHOUSE’s overall aesthetic.

The virus was a crop

of cacti or dragonfruit,

whatever spike goes right

to your head, she was dying

to get under your skin. Now

she takes off the armor,

goes raw and rightfully

invites you, if you want to

come in.

The “Virus” poems are all startling and frank, with an unflinching look at femininity and sex from a woman’s point of view.

Melissa Mesku’s short story, “Dead in the Eye” is another example of work well-suited to the theme of the issue. This coming of age story begins in this way:

The boys came back feverish, yelling over each other. Aunt Grandma climbed down from the trailer to hush them. It was just after twilight but their eyes were wild, glowing. Bright impossibilities spilled out of their mouths.

Among them:

1/ Some witches had turned a boy into a duck and then murdered him

2/ Raven-haired sorceresses had buried a dead duck which came back to life

3/ A pair of girl Satanists had burned a duck alive and then drank its blood

Aunt Grandma’s twin came out of her trailer next door. The boys saw they had a new audience and ran to her, shouting. They crowded around her like dogs.

Mesku’s story focuses on two young teenaged girls, one of whom is the protagonist, and their development from girls to young women through interactions with boys and with each other. The story’s slightly skewed details highlight how strange adolescence feels, with its mixture of new freedoms and the loss of childhood naiveté.

Michael Chin’s story, “Forever,” the longest in this issue, has as its protagonist a troubled young man, Verne, who is both saved and cursed by Penelope, who becomes his lover, makes him ringmaster of her family’s traveling circus, dies, and then continues to haunt and torture him every time he sleeps, forever after. Chin’s description of the circus performers, who are wary of Verne as the ringmaster, illustrates his style and meshes well with FLAPPERHOUSE's overall aesthetic. “They were freaks and vagabonds. Dirty. Tired. They dined on roadkill and grass. A fire eater, his face half burnt and melted. A sword swallower, mute for all the mistakes he’s made. The Reptile Man. Big bosomed dancing girls. A loud-mouthed wrestler.”

The focus of “Forever” is the relationship between Penelope and Verne, and is clearly symbolic of the difficulty of fully moving on after the loss of a lover. As Chin opens his story, and repeats as a refrain within it: “You fall in love with a woman all at once. You lose her in pieces.” This story is one that stayed with me long after I first read it.

Gabriela Garcia’s four poems are less surreal but equally sensual and arrestingly honest:

Mark

was a mosquito curl,

a hungry apple core.

He ate the girl and he shouldn’t have.

It was very wrong.

She was wearing linen when he collapsed

on her quilt beside her two shimmying ponytails.

He cut them off and put them in water,

eventually leaving to throw a salad at someone.

Garcia’s poems feel menacing; in each, young women, symbolized by their ponytails, are threatened or harmed by men. They resonate clearly in this moment of #metoo, suggesting the vulnerability of young women before they are even old enough to understand how to protect themselves from unwanted sexual harassment and violence.

FLAPPERHOUSE is an interesting journal, definitely off the track of academically-affiliated literary journals, and that is a strength. It would no doubt make a good home for work that is hard to place in more conventional journals. The editors say they work to provide quick responses to submissions, though they are highly selective, according to Duotrope reporting. In addition to being a home for unusual literary works, FLAPPERHOUSE 17 was engaging and fun to read; I would recommend subscribing to it, either in print or PDF.